Kudos to Sooraj Barjatya for making another horrendous film, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo

One must hand it to Sooraj Barjatya. In this age of the new Bollywood, he still thinks that a film as gaudy as Prem Ratan Dhan Payo can work. Perhaps it would too, thanks to Salman Khan, but there seems little reason why it should, if the trailer is any indication.

For starters, there is Sonam Kapoor singing a sinfully syrupy tune as the trailer opens, a song in which she mouths platitudes about the fake quality of money. Only love, she tells us, mangling EM Forster's subtle injunction. We know it's platitudes because she advocates them from such grand perches as to erase any doubts about her pedigree.

From the looks of it, this seems to be a movie about princes and princesses and torrid love affairs that break custom. In other words: so far, so clichéd. There is Neil Nitin Mukesh glaring angrily into the camera and there is the talented Swara Bhaskar who we know from reports plays Salman's sister in the film but who makes a blink-and-miss appearance in the trailer. I fear that Barjatya is walking down Subhash Ghai's path with this film. Ghai also thought for the longest time (and perhaps thinks so even now) that he can continue to make the kind of over-the-top dramas that brought him much fame in the '80s and '90s.

To be sure, there is space for grandness in Hindi cinema, as the success of Sanjay Leela Bhansali attests. But Bhansali's works are essentially love stories that play against colossal backdrops. Their thematic thrust comes from the passion that the lead duo share, with the backroom shenanigans accentuating the central romance. Ram Leela worked because it showcased the smouldering intensity of Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh against a traditional Gujarati setup. The first was the meat, the second only stock.

Compare this with PRDP, and one can barely suppress a yawn. There is nothing in the trailer to suggest that Sonam and Salman are lovers except for that irritating ditty that runs in the background. Sonam laughs and cries and dances and pretty much emotes as she always does, picking up from a repository of five-odd stock emotions. Salman does little except be Salman, which entails looking into the camera either with fury or confusion. There is some gratuitous dialogue about the importance of family and there is the expected play on his name in the film being Prem, and that's it. We reach the end of the trailer.

Why is Barjatya doing this to himself? He has a reputation to live up to. I was too young to fully comprehend Maine Pyaar Kiya when it released in 1989, even if I did find the soulful title track, lifted unapologetically from Stevie Wonder, a pre-emptive balm for future traumas. But when Hum Aapke Hain Koun! released in 1994, I grew enthralled with its simplicity, its expert, non-condescending fashioning of small town ethics. That film was not supposed to work, with its jobless men and forever-singing women, but it still did because it captured some essential Indian truth about matters of love, matrimony and death. One writer memorably described it as a movie in which nothing much happens except for "two weddings, fourteen songs and one funeral", and yet we lapped it up.

That was the power of Barjatya: He was the only director who could be relied upon to give us films that were simple, perhaps even simplistic, but never far from charming. But he has lost that capacity in the aftermath of HAHK. His 1999 film, Hum Saath Saath Hain, was an unabashed weepie which took its self-referential concept too far. 2003's Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon was worse. Barjatya seemed to not know how to reconcile his conservative vision with a new cinema, helmed by the likes of Dil Chahta Hai. The result was a movie that serves as a master class in misdirection (and hamming by two of today's most accomplished actors, Kareena Kapoor and Hrithik Roshan).

In 2006 Barjatya released Vivah, which seemed to return him to his erstwhile territory. But by now his style, which had seemed cute in 1994, was beginning to grate. Vivah, starring Shahid Kapoor and Amrita Rao, is the story of the couple's love and marriage which gets railroaded by an accident in which Rao suffers substantial burn injuries. Even though Barjatya infused enough sensitivity into Shahid's character, he could not bring the film to completely outgrow the deeply instilled misogyny of traditional marriage norms. While the film did well at the box office, it left a bad taste for the discerning viewer.

Nine years later, Barjatya is helming a new project. He is banking on the success his films with Salman have enjoyed in the past, as also the support of a loyal fan following that will take anything Bhai does on screen. Maybe PRDP will work but the trailer leaves little doubt that Barjatya is nowhere close to regaining the magical touch of his earlier films.